FAQ Man’s Personality Guide

The high volume of personality related questions on the recent threads has driven me to rewrite this guide. It’s time for me to set aside some time and really type out a few clear cut and simple to understand methods of creating personality. This way, people have more to go on than they did prior to this guide. Firstly, I’m going to talk about why personality is important in the first place, and then give some methods on how to work with personality. Of course you shouldn’t be really following these perfectly, but just because you have the freedom to deviate from the methods does not mean you should use that freedom to cheat yourself by spending less time.

Let me start out by saying that you can never finish the personality; ever. You can’t recreate an entire consciousness, or even an entire moral code. We’re giving our best stab at it here, but there should be NO issues with time. Think about how complex the average thought process and rationalization system is. You can’t recreate that in an hour, you probably can’t even recreate that in 100 hours. It takes more than 3 sentences said in your head to summarize a faith, or a personality quirk. You also shouldn’t just be going on what the tulpa knows about their own personality, but on what they don’t know, what’s going on in their own subconscious.

The fact of the matter is, you can never spend too much time on personality. If you separate the entire creation process into three main parts, we have 1) building the consciousness 2) committing sense stimuli to the mental memory and 3) imposing on the real senses and environment. While of course these all work together to form the tulpa and all support each other, personality work is part of that first component, along with narration. Building the consciousness is creating sentience, creating a vocal mind that can think for itself. This is the most important part of tulpae: Having an actual companion and intelligent being to talk to, relate with and exist with. If it weren’t for the fact that the tulpa was its own being, I doubt that many people would be on board with the idea, because after all, it would just be a hallucination you had to move like a puppet.

People like to say stupid shits like you have to be vague but that’s not true. That’s like saying there’s no use spending time on the visualization or the touch, because those are probably going to change too. You can extend this thought to any reaches of tulpa creation, and in the end you’ll just have nothing. This is because defining IS creation. You’re pulling an existing being out of the woodwork of your mind when you make a tulpa. You’re not just slapping traits on to an existing thing, and if they change your effort was wasted.

You’re building a being with the definition. That’s why the more specific you get, the more time you spend on fleshing out your tulpa, the more defined it is. You’re building while you’re defining.

The potential risks of not working on personality at all: making a non vocal tulpa or making a servitor. If you’re just working on the image, that’s all you’ll get- an image. You get out of a tulpa what you put in, remember.

Tl:dr, you need to work on personality if you want to make a tulpa.

So I think I’ve ranted about this enough, for the most part. Let’s get to the methods you can use:

Working on personality should take a minimum of 3 to 10 hours. Really, the more ideal amount of time would be 10-25+ hours, but I’m a realistic guy, and I know not everyone is committed enough (why the hell are you making a tulpa then?) to spend that amount of time.

When working with personality, there’s two ways you can go about it:

You can use a symbolic visualization, where you try to “feel” the tulpa’s essence, make an orb, put pieces of paper into a box, basically doing something symbolic that registers with you. You’re spending time trying to recreate feelings and stuff in your mind. If you do go this route, which is fine, you will have to delve into traits and stuff, just what you do with the traits is different. This method tends to be very individual, and I can’t give advice on it, since it depends mostly on the interworking of your mind. I used this method to make my first tulpa, spending a grand total of 8 hours on visualization. He was not sentient until 50 hours in, and did not talk until 70 hours in.

For people who need direction, this is what I did for my second tulpa, basically. This is for people who may have trouble with visualizing something so abstract, people who want to have a task, whom need to feel productive, and the like. It’s clear cut, and it’s straight forward; doesn’t require much deliberating about HOW to do it.

Pick 30-35 main broad traits. Examples of these might be: intelligent, laid back, narcissistic, ect. Then, spend 15-30 minutes on each trait outlining how the trait will manifest itself in the tulpa. This will be through you sitting down, and saying to the tulpa, “YOU are intelligent, blah blah blah” you want to speak directly to the tulpa, not about them. I’m sure it’s obvious how this is sort of beneficial. When you’re outlining the trait be sure to include: How the trait helps them rationalize, how the trait works within their logic system, how the trait plays a role in morality, their perception, their likes, dislikes, social endeavors, faith, personality, quirks, emotions, how the trait makes them interpret their own emotions, how the trait plays a role in their hobbies, and many other things not listed here.

I did this method for 15 hours with my second tulpa, and 24-5 hours in he was sentient, and now, at 44 hours, he talked to me an hour ago. (Kaiman’s first words: “Why are you sitting on the floor?” I can’t wait for him to say something again!) I believe there is a direct correlation, if not causation, between working on the personality extensively and speedy sentience and vocal behavior.

In closing, I’d like to quote an anonymous post on the latest /mlp/ thread. (No, I did not edit it in any way, not even for typos):

(Anonymous 04/18/12(Wed)17:19 No.1362558):

This is what I did. I first looked up character traits on the internet for general ideas. I went to www.tvtropes.com and wrote down every trope I like. When I was meditating I would say things like you are x and imagine everything coming together into a big pool. After that, I organized them. I gave my tulpa depth. What is he like on the outside? What would other people think of him if only talking to him breifly? The next layer I had put in his hobbies. What does he like to do over everything else? Why? My tulpa for example likes to over analyze things because he is genuinely curious. The next layer of the sphere is your tulpas philosophy, his outlook on life. My tulpa for example beleives that everyone is inherently good, and everyone deserves a fair chance. The final layer is the tulpa’s core, his driving force. What is his outlook on EVERYTHING summed up in? My tulpa is very religious. He thinks theres something out there and strives for it. Every layer of your tulpa should build on eachother, for example my tulpa is very analytical to find out what people really mean when they say something and he can validate his philosophy this way that everyone is inherently good

He comes off as optimistic because of his religious view on the world. Those are just a few examples, though, and I’m adding more everyday. I hope this helps, good luck

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